


abbey \\ mitski

by daephanes



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Canon-Typical Blood and Gore, Character Study, Gen, Harrowhark is in desperate need of a hug, mentions of cannibalism, minor Harrow the First: Act One spoilers, please be nice to me I haven't written in four years, what could pass as suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23793766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daephanes/pseuds/daephanes
Summary: In which Harrowhark understands what must be done.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	abbey \\ mitski

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the HtN juvie of the Locked Tomb server - here's some more screaming fuel. Love, Kit.
> 
> I repeat!! Harrow the Ninth Act One spoilers follow!!

_I am hungry  
I have been hungry  
I was born hungry  
What do I need? _

"The Tomb I will serve till the end of my days, and then see me buried in two hundred graves . . ." Harrowhark the First whispered the morbid lullaby of her horrid great aunts for the first time in so long that the words felt foreign on her cracked, trembling lips. Unpainted cheeks soaked, she scowled, the tears in her lips splitting to the point that the tears stung as they dissipated to nothing. Harrowhark the First knows that this is what was expected of her. Years before she was even born, she was expected to be the perfect necromancer. A genius with no equal, worthy of even the Sixth House and beyond. The best in her generation. As if there was a generation to compare her to. Harrowhark Nonagesimus had been born starving for knowledge. An insatiable thirst that was conditioned into her head from the moment she came into the world and wailed her first. She wanted everything. Everything to make up for the cost of her birth. Every miniscule lesson, every complex theorem, every horrible book on the shelves of the decaying Ninth House library. This hunger only swelled as she aged, wanting every letter on every page not only in her House, but all of the records of the Sixth, the Fifth, the Third, for herself. Anything she could get her hands on was consumed with a vigor unlike any other. She had to become the perfect necromancer, one that could restore their expiring House. When the books ran out, and when the other Houses didn't comply with her requests, her craving got the best of her. Opening the Locked Tomb was an act worse than treason, but as she gazed down at the corpse that served as a harbinger of the fall of the King Undying, she found nothing but adoration. Nothing else mattered. She began creating her own ways to satisfy her hunger, and as she grew older, she fulfilled the hunger for a perfect necromancer of her parents as well. Harrowhark Nonagesimus had been born starving for knowledge. Harrowhark the First had been born starving for naught but the life of the woman she so selfishly took.

_I am something  
I have been something  
I was born something  
What could I be? _

"The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee." Harrowhark the First choked out the penultimate words of Gideon Nav, her flushed, wet face slowly raising from the darkened hole that she had created by pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees. Harrowhark the First was repulsive. Hearing the name for the first time, even coming from the lips of the God whom she had exalted for seventeen years, made Harrowhark the First want to claw the wretched name from her mind and tear it to shreds. The man who became God and the God who became man had the nerve to tell her not to despise Cytherea (the mere thought of the name made the corners of her eyes burn with unshed tears of anger all over again). He had said that he had hoped the heirs of the Houses to come to this on their own terms. To become an abomination on their own terms. The ascension didn't feel like what she had expected. All she remembered was hot, wet blood, the blood of Gideon Nav, streaming down her chin in rivulets, muscle and flesh tearing between her incisors, sinew being ground down by her molars. She remembered forcing it down her throat, choking on her own tears as she struggled to take another bite. Then, even though she was kneeling next to her cooling body, Griddle's lips brushed against the shell of her ear, and she knew that she had succeeded to satisfy the hunger of the Reverend Daughter. The scream of regret and of hatred and of pain that ripped through her vocal chords was one that could not be stopped by simply closing her mouth. She could still feel it tearing her windpipe from the inside out, ringing in her ears. It hadn't stopped since her ascension, and she doubted that it would ever stop. Harrowhark the First was repulsive. Harrowhark the First was an abomination.

_I am waiting  
I have been waiting  
I was born waiting  
I was born waiting for that something  
Just one something _

"I pray the Tomb is shut forever. I pray the rock is never rolled away," Harrowhark the First prayed, her legs straightening and her arms falling limp at her sides. Waiting was something that Harrowhark Nonagesimus knew well. The Ninth House was patient. The Ninth House did not give with time. Her parents, the great aunts, and even Crux had told her that the Ninth House would be reborn again. She would ask when, in all of her childhood ignorance, but the only answer she received was silence. Harrowhark Nonagesimus was patient; she waited and waited and waited for her chance to pull her ancestors House from the brink of death. Now, the Ninth House was to be reborn, thanks to her. Thanks to her sacrifice. She felt nausea creep up her esophagus even thinking about her "sacrifice". What had she sacrificed? Gideon Nav had sacrificed everything for her. She still couldn't comprehend why, after hours of wracking her brain. She had done everything in her power to make Gideon perfectly miserable. She was cruel, malicious, heartless, and utterly despicable. She didn't deserve Gideon Nav. Now thanks to her "sacrifice", the Ninth House would be born anew, and the thousand, thousand years waiting would be over. Harrowhark Nonagesimus remembered the words that Aiglamene had said to Gideon that day in the depths of Drearburh. "I used to think we were waiting for something . . . and now I think we're just waiting to die." That statement had felt like a punch to the gut for Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Waiting was what the Ninth House did best. Without the waiting, Harrowhark the First felt empty. She no longer was of use to the Ninth House. Waiting was something Harrowhark Nonagesimus knew well. Waiting was something Harrowhark the First longed for.

_I was born something  
I was born_

"I pray that which was buried remains buried . . ." Harrowhark the First said thickly, letting her feet drop over the metal railing of the gurney and standing up slowly, unsteady legs shaking beneath her. Harrowhark the First was born under duress. That was how the Emperor of the Nine Houses had worded it. She had been born in order to save herself. How pathetic. She was born to keep herself alive in the mass grave that was called Canaan House, and now as she stood in the Lord Undying's ship, with a body that could withstand the tests of time ten thousand times over, she felt more dead than ever. She had contemplated death, specifically her own, in only a handful of instances throughout her seventeen years. As soon as she could understand the concept, she understood the cost of her birth. She knew it almost sounded self-righteous in her thoughts, but she realized very quickly that she was too expensive to die. She had to live, even if her only reason for staying around was so that the death of two hundred children, the future of the Ninth House, was not in vain. Harrowhark Nonagesimus was born as the savior of the Ninth House, the Reverend Daughter, the one who would restore the Ninth House to the days of Matthias Nonius, and for this reason, she had to live. But as she contemplated her death once more, now as the Emperor's Lyctor, his ninth saint, his fingers and his gestures, the thought of living was one that was absolutely oppressive. There was now one new reason for living she could cling to that kept her head above water. Harrowhark the First had been born under duress. Harrowhark the First will live for Gideon Nav.

_Keeps me awake in the night  
Crying sets me free _

" . . . Insensate, in perpetual rest with closed eye and stilled brain," Harrowhark the First recited, slowly stepping through her doorway and out into the hallway, drying golden eyes ablaze. Harrowhark Nonagesimus thought she would know her duty as a Lyctor. She would become the semi-immortal Hand of the Emperor, her name hallowed in the halls of the Nine Houses for the next myriad, or until time stopped. She thought that she would surpass herself as a necromancer and become the perfect Lyctor. She would be unstoppable, more powerful than all nine Cohorts combined. But Harrowhark the First now understands her duty as a Lyctor. To defend a dying universe. To protect the man who became God and the God who became man. To shield herself and her brothers and sisters. Harrowhark the First knows that this is her duty. But Harrowhark knows what she wants. Not as a Lyctor. Not as a necromancer. Not as the Lady of the Ninth House. As Harrowhark. She knows that something must give within herself in order to fulfill both duties one day, one to herself, one as a Lyctor. Harrowhark knows what must be done.

_And I wake every night  
Crying sets me free _

"O corse of the Locked Tomb, beloved dead hear your handmaiden. I loved you with my whole rotten, contemptible heart - I loved you to the exclusion of aught else - let me live long enough to die at your feet," Harrowhark finished, her bare feet padding on the tile floor, one in front of the other, numbly taking her to the only place she could go. Her face was now dry, the only evidence of her weakness the residue that tears left behind. She closed her eyes, her lips pressed together in a firm line as she remembered the reason why she was here. Her determination, her stubbornness that would make a mule look compliant, her heart that was so gentle and kind that it could even forgive Harrowhark Nonagesimus, her crooked smirk, the way it felt to be embraced by her, that awful ginger hair of hers, the coppery taste of her blood, the stringy texture of her muscle, and those amber eyes that were stolen from her far too soon. Harrowhark swallowed hard and squeezed her eyes shut, picturing the face of Gideon Nav once more. Harrowhark knew what must be done. She found her lips forming the words, "One flesh, one end", before she could stop herself. With that and with the thought of her Griddle as fuel, Harrowhark opened the door to the room of Ianthe the First, preparing herself to die.


End file.
